Danish Film Institute’s chairman takes over regional film fund

by Jorn Rossing Jensen

17/06/2011

Danish Film Institute Chairman Bo Damgaard has been appointed managing director of the regional film fund FilmFyn, as of July 1, succeeding Lars Hermann, who has become head of Copenhagen Film Festivals.

With an annual budget of €1.5 million, of which €1 million is invested in feature films shot in the Funen (Fyn) region, FilmFyn has so far chipped in for the production of 35 full-length movies.

Recently the fund, which is partly owned by four municipalities on the island, co-produced Danish director Susanne Bier’s In a Better World[+see also: trailerfilm profile], which won this year’s Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Feature.

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Zentropa Entertainments filmed most of the feature, which took more than 400,000 admissions domestically and has sold worldwide, on locations in Faaborg, Svendborg and on Langeland in southern Funen.

”The appointment of Damgaard is a clever decision by FimFyn and a loss for us,” said Danish Film Institute Managing Director Henrik Bo Nielsen. Damgaard has chaired the Danish Film Institute board since April 2010.

Originally a journalist and teacher, Damgaard began working for television in 1978; from 1993-2007 he was programme director at Danish commercial broadcaster TV2, then he launched his own consulting firm.

One of FilmFyn’s ambitions is to include all ten Funen municipalities in the group of backing owners – ”and all the money invested through the fund is returned several times to the region”, Damgaard explained.

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